Sadgey New Moon
Joanna Macy is an elder who has had a profound impact on my life. As I have been bouncing around threads and themes for this Sadgey New Moon (exact at 3:32pm PST on December 12), something she has said many times in many ways keeps lighting up in my mind.
We have to remember to act our age…
… and we are as old as the stars.
Over the last two months, a yearning to be in contact with ancient wisdom has been a profound mover and shaker in my own heart as I grapple with a need to bear witness to atrocities while figuring out What I Can Do as one human. I long for connection with communities that center an alive and ensouled way of working within the cosmos. I am acutely aware of how heartbreakingly, destructively ill-equipped American culture is to deal with the emotional and spiritual complexities of living through these times.
One of my favorite Dave Matthews Band songs is rooted in an experience Dave had while re-visiting Southern Africa many years back. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and spent a good portion of his younger life there. As the story goes (yes, I really recommend listening to him tell the story), during this return visit he and his family went to visit with the Khoisan people. At night, they would sit around the fire and the people would begin singing and clapping “the most outrageous singing you’ve ever heard.”
Dave would ask the translator what the songs were about: rain…. the time when the animals come back… etc. And Dave would then ask what the specific words actually meant. The translator said that there were no words in the songs because they came into being before there were words.
… to remember that you have been singing a song since before there were words?!!
He goes on in an attempt to explain what it was like to be existing within the trance of the songs around the fire as people danced and began to “fall out” of the circle.. Witnessing with western consciousness the reality of people who, in his words, are the most advanced on the planet. Because (and these are my words, not his) they have maintained the memory of what it was like. The evolution of the world from thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago. Back into what the western world would call “pre-history” – a era that actually contains the vast majority of our species’ time here on this planet.
He wrote a song based on that experience.
“Strange evolution when people have come
To believe that we are its greatest achievement
When really we’re just a collection of cells overrating themselves
Hello god, I’m avoiding the truth”
“There’s always someone who tries to convince you
That they know the answer no matter the question
Be weary of those who believe in a neat little world
Cuz it’s just fucking crazy, you know that it is”
But really… humanity has a whole history and a whole experience of the world that goes deeper than the rise of whatever it is we exist within now. There are people walking this earth now – not to mention trees and waters and other non-human beings with memory – who have kept track of what they have learned about what it is to exist within an interdependent universe.
They have technologies of consciousness and of stone, water and blood that keep them connected to what it was to exist before words. And concepts. And modern consciousness.
The stories of Sagittarius are inherently woven with remembrance of natural cycles and awareness of our cosmic origins.
During times when the world is heaving with struggle and nightmare in the ways it is now, I find that I take solace in the fact that these memories still exist and that there are cultures that still center ancient wisdom. At the same time, I feel desperate to join them in full immersion. Sometimes that feels like a way to escape. Mostly, I think it is a calling to reconnect. At the same time, I sometimes find myself full of grief that these ancient histories are being wiped out so effectively by a system that feeds on destruction. I fear that there’s no turning back. I can’t figure out to reconcile or deal with ways that my day to day life inherently damages the wellbeing of the larger systems I am a part of.
Something, something we all contain multitudes.
And so… a Sagittarius New Moon. Sadge is a sign associated with hope, optimism and belief, but also deep wisdom. The wisdom that comes from engaging fully not just with our own individual life and microcosm, but with the world around us. Sadge is what happens when we have learned from our experiences and have begun to really understand.
Sadge is associated with vision. The bigger picture. Visions light the way, spark inspiration, and give us something to stretch towards at the same time as they orient us to meaning.
When we lose our ability to envision the world we want, we tend to experience hopelessness. When we lose contact with the stories and myths that help us to orient to the complexities of life, we can feel lost. Rudderless. Confused.
This New Moon takes place in a square aspect to Neptune in Pisces. This all at once expands the need for big picture visioning even more at the same time as it can underscore confusion, fogginess and some existential despair a la a longing to be in harmony with the natural world while grabbing a lunch coated in the plastic that is killing it/us.
This square to Neptune provides a hearty dose of capacity for healing at the same time as it can make it more difficult to sense, know or discern what is true.
However.
All of these placements – Sun and Moon in Sadge and Neptune in Pisces – are ruled by the same planet. That ruler, Jupiter, is currently in Taurus making an opposition with Venus in Scorpio. This configuration asks the question: what brings you hope while also building resilience and embodied gratitude and awareness of abundance?
Hope can build resilience. But it needs effort and follow through to take root, which is what the progression from Sagittarius to Capricorn teaches us. These two energies are being highlighted over the coming three weeks as Mercury retrogrades from Cap to Sadge, asking us to take stock of what we know (or think we know) about history and then how that interfaces with our beliefs.
At a very basic level, this New Moon is an invitation to tune into ancient intelligence and help it to weave into our present day visions for a future world. Before the dawn of capitalism, patriarchy and oppressive regimes hell bent on dominating landscapes, bodies and beings. The stories that came from before – whether through our ancestral lines, or from our elders, or from lineages that reach into a more distant past – can help us to navigate complexity, even as we are required to spin new tales. The archetypes are in fact shifting and changing.
Regardless, a stable truth remains: we know how to exist in reciprocity with the world around us. It is written in our cells as well as the stars. For they are one and the same. We just have to tune in.
Amanda is a queer astrologer who is very into relational, evolutionary and psychological astrologies. Sometimes she also writes about the world and her place in it. You can support her work — and get rad incentives like monthly AstroCircles, community hangouts with QA and free sessions through Patreon.
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